GM CEO Daniel Akerson, center right, monitors GM trading on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange yesterday

Kilgore explains:

The first trade on GM’s stock was $35, or 6.1% above the IPO price of $33. Many were expecting the stock to spike a lot higher at the open, perhaps closer to 20% above the IPO price. And remember that the first trade for the shares of Visa Inc., which still looks like the biggest IPO in U.S. history, was $59.50, or 35% above its $44 IPO price.

But the U.S. Treasury is not your typical investor. Obviously, the Treasury didn’t want to see the stock fall after the open, because it has over 500 million GM shares to dispose of over time. It also didn’t want to see the stock rise too much because that would suggest too much money was left on the table.

Yesterday’s offering was a big hurdle in the government’s efforts to recoup its money from the GM bailout. But there’s still a long way to go. We taxpayers need GM’s share price to continue rising over time, so that the government can continue selling its stake gradually as the stock rises. (It has said it won’t sell any additional shares for at least six months.)